“The events of this past year have made abundantly clear that we need to engage in fundamental work as Americans to discover again what we have in common and find a way forward based on shared values.” He continued by asserting that “land trusts can play an important role in helping bridge our political divide.” After all, “Literally and figuratively, we help people find ‘common ground’ as they get outside and together see, touch, smell and protect what is real and what is beautiful.”

“There is nothing better than looking out over a sea of conservationist faces…people who work long hours simply because they want to leave the Earth a better place,” said Wendy Jackson, executive vice president at the Alliance.

Wendy’s thought, “leaving the Earth a better place,” was a common thread throughout the speeches at this year’s Rally — with viewpoints from the ground, from mountain summits and from space.

During the Opening Plenary, Astronaut Pam Melroy revealed that one of her favorite parts about going to space is “taking pictures of the places that are near and dear to our hearts.”

One such place dear to Melroy is Lake Kezar in Maine. “We are members of the Greater Lovell Land Trust,” she said. “This is a very important and precious place to my family.”

Before she went to space people asked Melroy what her favorite planet was, and she used to answer “Neptune.” But now she says her definitive answer is Earth. “Something happens to us in space, and we astronauts call it the overview effect. It’s the experience of looking down at the Earth and realizing that everything that we know and love, every drop of water, every human, every piece of music ever written, everything that we know — we can go completely around in 90 minutes.”

In space, she says, you can see how connected things are, that there are no borders. “You just see the Earth as one giant ecosystem. The Earth is our home and it is a spaceship and we must be stewards of it.”

As she looked out over her audience, Melroy said, “I appreciate so much what you do. And I hope that you understand that you are not just stewards of the land and the water in the boundaries of your land trust; you are stewards of our planet, and I thank you for that.”

Rally Closing Plenary speaker Luis Benitez, director for the Outdoor Recreation Industry Office, State of Colorado, said that mountaineers and land conservationists ask the same questions: “How do we take care of this precious resource that we have? How do we market it, how do we promote it, how do we preserve it, and how do we teach the next generation just how important all of those things are?”

Talking about how big an impact the outdoor industry has economically, he asked: “Why are we begging for conservation and stewardship instead of defining the path forward for how we do this?”

The key, he feels, is innovation. “The definition of what comes next is going to be as extraordinary as we allow it to be. This idea that you have that might seem too out-of-the-box for the work that you do…that idea that everyone thinks is crazy — someday, the next generation will look back and not only say thank you but say it was simply genius.”

Watch video: Will Rogers, president and CEO of The Trust for Public Land (accredited), and recipient of the Land Trust Alliance’s Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award & Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Fellowship, gives his award acceptance speech.

Award Winners

Watch video: Will Rogers, president and CEO of The Trust for Public Land (accredited), and recipient of the Land Trust Alliance’s Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award & Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Fellowship.

Watch video: Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust (accredited), recipient of the Land Trust Alliance’s National Land Trust Excellence Award (for staffed land trusts). By helping foster a statewide conversation about the shared benefits of land conservation, the land trust has secured strong bipartisan accomplishments.

Watch video: Groton Open Space Association (Connecticut), recipient of the Land Trust Alliance’s National Land Trust Excellence Award (for all-volunteer land trusts). Through a variety of strategic partnerships with larger organizations, the land trust has demonstrated how smaller organizations can have larger influence.